Contemporary work environments often include facilities to permit mobile and other transient computing systems to access network resources. These systems present a number of challenges to a network administrator: how to restrict access to authorized users, how to manage machines that may be only intermittently connected, and so forth. Mobile systems themselves present another set of challenges: since they are often battery-powered, techniques to reduce power consumption are important to extend the systems' useful time before a recharge is required.
Sometimes network administration techniques conflict with power management procedures. For example, a network may be configured to disconnect clients that have not used the network for a certain period of time. (This may reduce network resource consumption by mobile or transient systems that have moved out of the area.) On the other hand, many mobile systems can enter a low-power “sleep” mode to conserve power, but while asleep, they may be disconnected from the network. When awakened, the mobile system may be required to perform a time- and power-consuming authentication process to re-establish its network connections. Methods to reconcile network operational procedures with power conservation states may be of value in this field.